Consultants: Cleveland Kidnapper's Death a Suicide

Consultants: Cleveland Kidnapper's Death a Suicide Created by kmiller on 12/3/2013 11:07:04 AM

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP): Two corrections consultants have concluded that Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro committed suicide in his prison cell and didn't die by accidentally killing himself while attempting to achieve a sexual thrill.

The nationally regarded consultants rejected a suggestion in a state prisons report last month that Castro's Sept. 3 hanging was not a suicide as originally believed.

The consultants' report released Tuesday says all available evidence, including a shrine-like display in Castro's cell and an increasing tone of frustration in his prison journal, point to suicide.

The 53-year-old Castro had just begun serving a life sentence plus 1,000 years for imprisoning and raping three women in his shuttered house for a decade.

Castro was found hanging in his cell from a bedsheet attached to a window hinge.